In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words “hope and change,” “change and hope” have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not “hope and change” but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.

Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity– not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.

You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an “undivided Jerusalem,” and opposed negotiations with Hamas– the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored “direct negotiations with Hamas.” Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote “Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state.”

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League’s 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: “There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President.”

Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, “of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. …Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli’s use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli’s assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its ‘legitimate right to defend itself.'”

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government’s assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on “the heart of a crowded refugee camp… with horrible bloodshed” in early 2008.

Israeli writer and peace advocate– Uri Avnery– described Obama’s appearance before AIPAC as one that “broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama “is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future– if and when he is elected president.,” he said, adding, “Of one thing I am certain: Obama’s declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people.”

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled “Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama” (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled “Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque.” None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans– even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to “tumultuous applause,” following a showing of a film about the Carter Center’s post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!

But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the “middle class” but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the “poor” in America.

Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke “change” yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the “corporate supremacists.” It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics– opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)– and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.

Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. “Hope” some say springs eternal.” But not when “reality” consumes it daily.

Today’s the big day, as Americans will go to the polls to select the next head of the corporate empire. Although it’s the end of Nader’s presidential campaign, he’s not taking a break for four more years. Instead his campaign announced that he’s already shifting focus to congressional elections for 2010. I’m not sure if he’s running for a seat or just helping other candidates. As I continue to get updates from Nader’s campaign I will post here, as well as begin keeping an eye out for third-party congressional candidates.

I must say, as an aside, that I was impressed by Texas ballots. They have Libertarian candidates listed for almost every electable position, right up to presidential candidate Bob Barr. Good luck to Mr. Barr and all third-party candidates today!

Major similarities and petty differences. If you still think Obama will represent progressive, anti-war, and environmental causes, listen to these candidates in their own words. Can you tell them apart?

Elizabeth Schulte at Counterpunch has a story further elaborating what an Obama cabinet might look like, and it ain’t appealing. According to the article, there could be an arms dealer, Madeleine Albright, and there’s even an outside chance that Robert Gates will be in the cabinet.

So I ask any fervent Obama supporters out there: What’s he going to do differently? Why should any progressive vote for Obama?

Vote Nader tomorrow and send the message that you won’t be satisfied with fake progressivism. We need REAL changes in Washington. No more corporate control of government, no more military-industrial complex, no more Zionism in our foreign policy, and no more of the racist drug war.

I’ve said it here all year long: Barack Obama (and John McCain, as it goes without saying) keeps some questionable company. (And I’m not talking about Bill Ayers) Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! has an interview transcript online that’s worth reading.

I’ve previously noted that Obama’s walked the Zionist walk pretty well so far. Now we know why:

Another key Obama adviser, Dennis Ross. Ross, for many years under both Clinton and Bush 2, a key—he has advised Clinton and both Bushes. He oversaw US policy toward Israel/Palestine. He pushed the principle that the legal rights of the Palestinians, the rights recognized under international law, must be subordinated to the needs of the Israeli government—in other words, their desires, their desires to expand to do whatever they want in the Occupied Territories.

There are a couple of other advisers to Obama that are mentioned in the interview as well, but this one shows best that it’ll be business as usual in the Obama White House — nothing’s gonna change much at all, but next to Bush he’ll look like an improvement.

I have lately been thinking about the various claims made regarding Social Security. It always starts with the promise that there won’t be any money left when my/your/their generation reaches retirement age because there are so many Boomers and it will all be just too expensive. “But wait,” they say, “let’s give Americans this money now and let them put it in stocks!”

Where would Americans be right now if that money had been put in stocks, instead of kept safe in Al Gore’s so-called “lockbox”?

What really happens if we take Social Security and put it in the market? We have the government forcing Americans to invest in companies and assume the associated risks. This is the definition of corporate socialism — government making sure the gains will be privatized while the losses will be socialized. Of course, in boom times, this option looks attractive, but the value of a stock is not pre-destined or guaranteed to be higher than it is the day you buy it. What happens when the public takes a bath on investments and people who’ve worked hard all their lives have nothing to show for it at retirement time? They’ll have to keep on working like desperate wage-slaves, just what corporations want.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says in his blog that “the stock market is for suckers.” He’d know, he made his millions off of suckers, and basically admits it. Don’t let McCain make a sucker out of you with his plan to privatize Social Security.

It’s been pretty exciting to see increased interest in this site as the election gets closer. People are doing honest-to-god research on the candidates, including Nader. The most common search term that seems to bring people here is “why I should vote Nader.”

Today, though, I saw a new one: “Nader’s dirty laundry”

I guess this means that people want to know the scandalous details about candidates. Worse, it suggests that people expect scandalous details about candidates.

So I did a search for myself, on Google, with “Nader dirty laundry”, “Nader scandal”, etc., and the only things that come up are everyone else’s scandals and dirty laundry, with Nader always giving the commentary.

The important thing is that Nader doesn’t associate with pre-fascist preachers and mafia types like McCain and Obama, and doesn’t have connections to crooks like Ted Stevens.

If you’re here looking for a reason not to vote Nader, there are plenty more reasons not to vote Obama or McCain. They’re both on the right wing of the corporate party and they won’t end the occupation of Iraq, they won’t give us universal health care, they won’t impeach Bush & Cheney. McCain & Obama will continue to bail out corporations while American citizens scramble to pay for food and gas, they will continue to kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis in your name, they will continue to make you “pay or die” in the hospital, they will continue to look past Israel’s inhumane treatment of Palestinians. In other words, Obama/McCain will not make any changes whatsoever to the status quo.